Predatory publishing: Concepts, 
   causes and consequences
   Johann Mouton and Marthie van Niekerk
   DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Scientometrics and STI Policy, CREST, 
   Stellenbosch University
   Elsevier webinar on predatory publishing 
   7 April 2021
  Predatory publishing – matters of 
  definition
  A definition: The watchdog –
  Jeffrey Beall
 • Predatory journal are OA journals that exist for the sole purpose 
  of profit
 • These predators generate profits by charging (excessive) author 
  fees, also known as article processing charges (APCs.
 • These journals typically solicit manuscripts by spamming 
  researchers (especially Yahoo and Gmail accounts)
 • These journals engage in highly suspicious editorial practices, such 
  as promising very short turn-around, declaring fake information on 
  journal indexing, and so.
 https://scholarlyoa.com/2016/01/05/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-
 2016/
  Black sheep / predatory / “grey” / fake / 
  opportunistic journals
  • In 2008, Gunther Eysenbach called Bentham Publishers, Dove 
   Medical Press and Libertas Academica the “black sheep” of OA 
   that aggressively spams academics for articles
  • Jeffrey Beal introduced the term “predatory” to describe 
   exploitative OA journals (2010)
  • Walt Crawford coined the term “grey” OA journals for gold OA 
   journals not included in the DOAJ list, but on the Beall’s list 
   (2014)
  • “Fake” journals focus on profit without adequate peer review 
   (Mehrpour and Khajavi, 2014; Hemmat Esfe et al., 2015)
  • Greenblatt and Bertino labelled the journals as “opportunistic” 
   (2018)